Missed opportunities

 I was thinking about a girl I met my senior year of college.  I decided to look her up in my college alumni page.  She had a unique first name which I recalled.  I plugged it in the search box, and her name came up.  There was only one former student with her first name.  I know it was her because she was pursing a master's degree in the field listed in the directory.  I was surprised, because it sounded Hispanic, though she wasn't Hispanic.  After doing research on her, I now know  why she had an Hispanic first name.

I remembered our last conversation and thought it would give me some clues about her origins.  According to my memory, her mother was a professor in a college in Virginia.  My memory was incorrect.

She is listed in the alumni director with a last name.  It said she is married.  Presuming that was the name of her husband, I researched for her under what I thought was her husband's last name.  I came up with nothing.

Then, I just  searched for her first and last name.  I soon found that she used both her and her husband's last name.  I learned other things about her.

I learned that both of her parents were physicians and that she was orphaned at the age of seven.  Each of her parents died before the age of 50.   She was born when her mother was 40.  Apparently, she was raised by her uncle, because she is listed as one of his survivors, even though she was his niece.  I assume then that he raised her.

I discovered that she married a prominent man from her home town who was a couple of years her senior.  He was a lawyer who no longer practices law.  The family owns ranches with a lot of mineral interests.  Those mineral interests have made the family quite wealthy.

I discovered that she is the managing partner of a company that manages a limited partnership consisting of the family assets.  It is my impression that the wealth placed in that limited partnership came from a combination of her inheritances and her husband's inheritances.

I discovered that both she and her husband were from very prominent ranching families in South Texas.  They were so prominent  that geographic landmarks are named for them.  I discovered that she and her husband own a home worth almost $2 million.

I discovered why the name of that college came up in our conversation.  I found a wedding announcement that said she was the maid of honor at her best friends wedding in Virginia.  They both graduated from the same college.  It was that college that she mentioned in our conversation.

I also saw that she had sold a very prominent home in her home town a year before we met.  She was not struggling financially, even though she was orphaned at age 7.   I don't know why I recalled that she told me her mother was a professor at the prominent college.

I am happy for her.  She was out of my league when I encountered her.  I'm glad, in retrospect, that we never got to know each other deeply.  She was off limits, anyway, because she is a Roman  Catholic.

The missed opportunity occurred when we had a chance meeting a few days before I left my college town.  I went upstairs to check the job postings.  When I came back down she was waiting for me.  I  made a casual remark and bade her good bye.  We never talked again.  I just never forgot her.

When I think back about my life, I think of relationships with women who were above me.  They were smarter or they came from more prominent families.  They were more cultured.  They elevated me.  I never understood why they gave me the time of day.  They outclassed and they deserved to be married to men of their class.

I know I would have disappointed them.  They would soon have come to realize that I was beneath them.  I did not have what it took to rise to their level.  They are happier without me and I am free of the knowledge that I would have ruined their lives if they had  married me.

The Bible says men and women shouldn't be unequally yoked.  I think it means more than just being a Christian.  Realistically, there is stratification among Christians.  People should date within their own  class.  A man should never marry up and women shouldn't marry down.  I don't think it is wrong for a woman to marry up, but if there is too much of a difference, she will be miserable.  Men and women need to find mates within their own class.  The best way to do that is to talk to parents and find out if they have friends with daughters who would be good dating partners.  Dating the children of people in   parents' social group is likely to result in a marriage that is not like to be strained by a spouse's inability to keep up socially.  I have seen other advantages, too.  When children are involved, there might be a perception that a spouse married up.  After the death of the first spouse, she might want to marry up, thereby depriving the children of an inheritance.  Second marriages always present these problems.

Manchester Bombings and Ariana Grande

You're a parent of teenage girls.  They want to go to a  concert by Ariana Grande.  What do you say?  What do you do?

In today's world, it is dangerous for anybody to gather in crowds.  Is it responsible to let a teenager or a younger child go to a large arena?  I question whether, in an age of terrorism, it is ever responsible to let teenagers and younger attend concerts without adult supervision.  There are other ways to cultivate independence.  I suggest the following

1. Have her join a service group and take on a project, such as volunteering in a nursing home
2. Have her teach a Sunday School class and help out on an outing to a zoo or museum
3. Have her learn a musical instrument
4. Have her join a musical ensemble and entertain parents or friends at a backyard party
5. Encourage her to develop a special interest, such as drawing, painting, or scientific exploration
6. Cultivate a love of books and reading
7. Encourage her to start a discussion group on various topics, such as national affairs and current events
8. Give her chores to do around the house
9. Let her take over the cooking duties from time to time and let her explore her creative side
10. Bottom line.  Keep her busy so she won't be tempted to waste her time consuming entertainment.
11. Teach her to see how shallow and manipulative entertainers are
12. Take her to work and have her assist you in a meaningful way.  Pay her for her contribution.
13. Introduce her to people who work in areas where she has expressed interest.  Encourage her to read about a particular industry before she talks with someone who does that kind of work.  Encourage her to actually visit the work sites and see how people do their work.  Try to find opportunities for her to intern.

Encourage her to develop interests for her leisure time that don't involve entertainment.  Help her join with others to create their own entertainment, whether it be performing music, dance routines, or reading.

Ariana Grande's lyrics encourage your daughters to be "bad girls."  She sings that every girl wants to be a "bad girl."  Is that the influence you want for your daughter?  Do you want your daughter to envision herself cavorting around in skimpy clothes singing about being a "bad girl?"  Surely that is a waste of her time.  She isn't growing as a person while listening to this trash. 

It is my opinion that this is time to shut Ariana Grande down.  She needs to find a new occupation.  She's a bad influence on young girls.

My Thoughts on Contemporary Christian Music

First, let’s define terms.  By Contemporary Christian, I refer to songs that have been popularized on Christian radio.  They tend to be songs that have been written in a manner to be sung by soloists.  They are monophonic rather than blended, because they are designed to be sung after the style of the performer whose song has made it to the top of the charts.  They are not songs that have been preserved in hymnbooks.  Rather the lyrics are projected on a screen and singers are expected to already be familiar with the tunes.  Typically, the accompaniment is guitar, drums, keyboards, and synthesizer.  The music has an electronic sound.  Also, to participate in a contemporary worship, one has to be free to raise one’s hands and to dance to the music.  Being in a contemporary worship is not much different from being in a rock concert.  The center of attention is the performer or praise team.  Dress is informal and casual.

Now, before I offer my criticism and comment, I must tell something about my background.  First, I am a Baby-Boomer, the generation that started the Contemporary Christian Music movement and a more casual approach to worship.  I have in my past criticized the stained glass windows, the robes, the rituals, the ceremonies, and the pipe organ.  I have seen those adornments as ostentatious, which created distance between the worshiper and the object of our worship.  I have criticized the hymnbook because it seemed too rigid, lacking openness to new sounds and new ideas.  I’ve been a member of a praise team.  I was even a member of a church choir that made the modern equivalent of a CD of contemporary songs.

I remember attending my first contemporary Christian concert.  It was by the group Love Song, and I was convinced it was the way of the future for Christian music.  In short order, Christian singers such as Amy Grant, Evie Tournquist, Sandy Patti, and others began to become popular singers.  These new singers were being asked to be featured singers at Baseball games.  Debbie Boone was one of the first to sing a so called “Christian song” that also made the pop charts.  It was “You Light Up My Life,” making the “You” very ambiguous.  Did “you” refer to Christ or did it refer to the object of human love?  This was the key to what was known as “crossover” music.  The goal was to sell music to both camps.

I accepted other forms of Contemporary Christian music.  I attended a church in Bryan Texas that birthed the singing group, Sounds of Salvation, back in the 1970s.  It brought drums and guitar into the auditorium and sang its contemporary songs.  It attracted the youth to the church.  I was one of them.  One of the songs that I remember is Larry Norman’s “I wish we’d all been ready.”  Other songs were less focused on the end of the world and were more focused on a personal need for a relationship with someone who would always be there.  Many of the songs used allusions, but never pointed specifically to Christ.  For example, a song called “Come to the Water” invited the listener to come to the side of a person, sit by his side, and no longer thirst.  Obviously, the intent was to present the picture of Christ and the woman at the well, but nowhere in that song is Christ mentioned. Similarly, the song “Like the woman at the well I was searching for things that could not satisfy,” never mentioned the name of Christ.  It did say, “and then I heard my savior speaking, draw from the well that never shall run dry.”  Another song compared Christ to a lighthouse and told a story of a person who was like a storm tossed ship on the sea.  It asked the question, “if it wasn’t for that lighthouse, where would this ship be?”  The grammar was wrong, but that's okay in CCM.

These songs had deep emotional impact, but they taught very little truth or doctrine.  In fact, I would have to admit that there was a time in my life when I thought doctrine was divisive.  I thought that we really needed to unite around the fact that once we were lost and are now found in Christ.  The key was Christian unity and denominations didn’t matter.

I was raised in pop culture, though I was never as fully immersed in pop culture as other people my age might have been.  I listened to the music on the radio.  I didn't go to rock concerts.  Many of the singers and the tunes of that era are still familiar to me.  Some of the music was soft rock.  Some of it was more easy listening.  Other tunes had a faster dance beat and some of it was more of a hard rock nature.

I was raised in a traditional church, with stained glass windows, a pipe organ, a small choir and a pastor in a robe.  Truthfully, I found it boring.  The choir music was not meaningful and the hymnal seemed boring and stifling.  In fact, one of my first experiences in a college Sunday School class turned me off to church for a while.  The teacher was a charismatic and declared to us that he was able to read the original Greek language without having had a course in Greek.  I immediately turned him off because I rejected the idea that a person could hear the voice of God.  I quit because I thought the church was full of crazy people like him or people who otherwise didn’t think intelligently about God.  The whole thing seemed wasteful.

I was influenced, not only by the pop culture, but by the public school.  Unknown to me, Humanist ideas were infused throughout the curriculum.  Evolution was at the root of my view of who I was.  I did not see myself as a creation of God, as much as I saw myself as the accidental joining of a sperm and an egg in my mother’s womb.  I saw myself as a member of the most highly evolved group of mammals, and I assumed evolution would continue, guided only by chance, natural selection, and survival of the fittest.  I saw the entire world as an evolving experiment, not guided by any intelligent outside force.

To me, God at most was an outside observer.  I thought he might exist, but he wasn’t a personal being with whom I desired to have a relationship.  Rather, church was something people did to be part of civilization.  I didn’t see Church membership as being essential to my existence.  I was, for all intents and purposes, a secularist.  Contemporary Christian music, by mocking some of the sounds of the secular culture, helped move me toward Christianity.

The messages of the songs were vague, such that I was unable to discern that George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was not a Christian song.  Nor was I able to discern that John Lennon’s “Imagine” was a song calling for atheism.  I thought that the entire world of popular music was moving toward a perfect state in which we would one day see all people worshipping together in a multicultural worship service.  I thought one day we would be singing each other’s songs and enjoying being with each other in unity.

I was an infant spiritually.  Yes, I had prayed to receive Christ.  Yes, I had joined a small church with a more informal worship style.  Yes, I joined a church without stained glass windows or a pipe organ, and with a pastor who didn’t wear a robe.  I didn’t own a suit at the time and did not feel out of place attending worship without one.  The pastor wore a suit and the women wore dresses.  People weren’t dressed as if they were going to play golf after church, but neither were they dressed as if they were going to a symphony or formal occasion.

My love of music began to grow in that small church.  I joined a choir with a part time choir director who was pursuing a graduate degree in agriculture.  He wasn’t perfect, but it was my first introduction to four part singing.  As well as I recall, he chose more contemporary anthems.  We did wear choir robes and we did sit in a choir loft.  We had choir practice every Wednesday night.

After that experience, I joined a Bible Church with a part time music director.  He, too, chose contemporary music themes.  Our most difficult work was a piece by Bill and Gloria Gaither, entitled “His Love Reaching.”  I sang beside a man who tried his best to sing tenor.  His heart was in it, but he really had a difficult time singing the right notes.  It wasn’t easy.  We had a Body Life Sunday Evening Service.  My discernment then was so poor that I thought “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” was appropriate for evening worship.

Then, I was exposed to some truly excellent music.  It was the men’s chorus at Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church in Houston.  I don’t remember which songs those men sang, but they were significant pieces of church music from a long line of deeply meaningful Christian songs.  Also, the musicians there were great.  There was a world class pianist,   an excellent organist, and a beautiful violist.  My taste in music began to change at Bethel.

For the first time, I joined a group of singles where the singing of hymns was cherished.  I remember walking into that group for the first time when they were singing “Jesus What a Friend for Sinners” from the hymnbook.  They were singing enthusiastically.  I learned that these singles had college degrees and many were pursuing graduate level degrees.  A Rice University math professor was teaching Bible lessons and was a member of the men’s chorus.  A partner in a top Houston law firm was a member of the men’s chorus.  A top burn surgeon was a soloist.  Further, many of the intelligent young people could defend their Christian faith.  They had been exposed to Darwin and Humanism, but they could intelligently defend their faith focused on a Creator God who was still active in the lives of believers.

I began to enjoy singing traditional hymns from the hymnbook again, but I sang them more intelligently.  I didn’t merely sing them.  I concentrated on their words, and I began to see how the hymns taught doctrine.  I also remember singing the baritone part of “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name.”  It was positively wonderful to sing a part and listen to it blend with the other parts.  Blended, harmonious sound became a part of music and worship.  The hymnal helped me find my place in the harmony structure.

I would have to admit that I had a special relationship with that violist.  I grew up with sisters who played the classical piano.  Quite frankly, I found the repetitive nature of piano practice irritating, and I turned away from the piano and classical music in general.  Then, I met the violist.  I didn’t pursue her.  I saw her as an icon.  She was on a pedestal and she represented perfection.  She was beyond me.  She was a symbol of excellence.  She was untouchable and unreachable.  I could admire her, but I could not desire her.  I could only appreciate her.

It was a smile and a wave from her that turned me toward her.  I still kept my distance for a while, but she intrigued me.  Everything about her intrigued me, and I began to wonder why she would pursue a career in music.  I attended a concert where she played the viola as a member of the orchestra.  I began to develop a love for her kind of music.

I saw a sign for a performance of Bach’s Magnificat at the St Paul United Methodist Church.  I attended it alone because I did not yet feel comfortable asking the violist to attend a concert like that with me.  It moved me.  I met a member of the choir afterwards and told her how moving the music was.

Before I left Houston, I shared the performance of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” at Jones Hall, performed by the Houston Symphony Orchestra and chorus with the violist.  It was moving.  Knowing the violist, and the excellent music she appreciated, transformed my taste in music.  I had heard truly excellent music.  I would no longer be content with contemporary Christian music.

The violist’s influence wasn’t the only influence I had.  I would also listen to “The Lutheran Hour” on Sunday nights.  There, I heard the beautiful blended a capella voices of the Concordia College Choir.

In the space of two and half years, my taste in music dramatically changed.  The Bethel Men’s chorus, the excellent musicians, my relationship with the violist, the concert at St. Paul United Methodist Church, and the choral music on “The Lutheran Hour” changed me forever.

That would not be the end of the development of my musical tastes, though.  I joined a choir in my hometown.  Carey Ford was my first choir director.  He was attending seminary at the time while serving as choir director.  He stretched the choir by having us sing “The Last Words of David.”  He would continue to introduce what I would call “high church” music.  Following him was Keith Finch as an interim choir director.  Keith Finch began to teach us warm up techniques and he began to teach us fundamentals of good singing.  I recall how he emphasized that the vowels are the most important part of singing and the consonants should be crisp and precise.  Then, Larry Caudle followed, and continued to train us in proper warm up and vowel placement.  I began to see that truly excellent music requires training and discipline.  It doesn’t just happen.  I began to appreciate what it took to create good music.  I learned that we Southerners had a tendency to make dipthongs out of pure vowel sounds.  There was more to good music than just singing what comes naturally.

I realized that my knowledge of music was deficient.  So, I ordered a set of CDS entitled “How to Listen to and understand Great Music.”  I learned how musically illiterate I was.  It became clear to me that to presume contemporary Christian music was good music was cultural snobbery.  Music has a rich history and we are impoverished intellectually if we don’t know the history of music.

Larry Caudle stretched me with pieces from Handel’s Messiah, and pieces by Bach and Vivaldi.  Even though I lived a suburb, I felt like Larry Caudle was stretching us to be able to sing the very best music.  This is not to say that we don’t have some good music writers today.  One such writer is Tom Fettke, who wrote an excellent piece called “The Majesty and Glory of Your name.”  I also remember singing “My Eternal King,” some ancient lyrics put to an excellent modern piece of music.

I pulled out my cornet  after more than 20 years of non use and joined a church orchestra.  I had to refresh my ability to read music, to observe dynamics and to play with other musicians.  It was different from singing, but it reinforced in my thinking that truly excellent music is a product of hard work, discipline, practiced skill, and concentration.  Good music doesn’t just magically happen.

I’ve continued to learn more about music.  I am learning more about chord structure.  I’m learning to see chord structure in the music I play on my classical guitar.  I haven’t learned it all.  There’s much more to learn.  I pull out my cornet and play. I've learn to transpose on sight.  I have a greater grasp of the scales than I had when I played in high school.  I'm a better musician than I was then, and I'm still learning.

I think there is a certain arrogance in those who advance Contemporary Christian Music.  They begin with the assumption that what is new is necessarily better.  They do that in ignorance.  There are fundamentals of good music that go far beyond what we hear in Contemporary Music.  With that background, I’m going to outline some very specific deficiencies in Contemporary Music.

My first criticism is the emphasis on style and its outright rejection of traditional music.  Truly good music has elements of earlier styles.  It respects earlier music and does not outright reject it.

Lyrics broadcast on a screen do not lend themselves to blended sound.  Not only that, there are no cues in the music about where the tune is going.  Unless a person is familiar with a tune, there is no way that person has any clue as to what the tune is.  There is no indication of which key the song is in.

I have often found that many contemporary songs are written for singers with high voices.  I’ve heard some of those singers strain to hit the high notes.  Quite frankly, the notes are out of their range and they don’t sound good.

I have heard popular female vocalists.  They sing songs with a lot of air in their breath.  They don’t make pure sounds.  It seems that other popular singers want to mimic that breathy sound.  It isn’t good music and it isn’t good singing technique.

The lyrics are poor.  Because the songs are written to appeal to audiences rather than express truth, they tend to be generic.  Sometimes, they are little more than expressions of feelings.  They don’t teach doctrine or truth.

I find that Contemporary Christian Music also goes along with superficial Christianity.  It is an approach to Christianity that focuses on the social gospel more than it focuses on Christ as the author and finisher of our faith.  I don’t know what it does in the mind of the typical believer, but I do know it can be deceptive.  It is one thing merely to acknowledge God.  It is another to know God for who he really is.  Songs that don’t teach doctrine do not teach us who God really is.  They might evoke emotion and good feelings, but unless they teach us deep truths about God, they hardly qualify as worship music.

An example will suffice.  A few years ago, a singer sang the song Susan Ashton song “May Your Innocent Eyes Find Love In Your Lifetime.”  It was sung during a Christian worship service in the same service where we sang the lyrics to a hymn “and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.”  I asked, “who is innocent and to whom is this song being sung?”  It was sung around high school graduation, which made me wonder if she was singing to young high school graduates.  I wondered if she was singing to a baby.  I was so confused about the song that I called a radio station to find out if it was really a Christian song.  The radio station affirmed that it was in fact a Christian song.

I think the trend toward Contemporary Christian Worship is going to lead to increased superficiality in the church.  I reject Contemporary Christian Worship in its entirety.  I’ve seen it. I’ve participated in it.  I see its errors.  I reject it entirely.

High Achievements by Illegal Immigrants

I'm going to be politically incorrect.  I'm going to use the word "illegal" to modify the noun "immigrant" where those immigrants either crossed the border illegally or overstayed their tourist visa.  "Undocumented worker" is not a proper label because it obscures the fact that these people didn't have a right to become documented in the first place.  They are undocumented because they broke the law.

Two women are in the news for having achieved high honors in high school despite being illegal aliens.  Their names are Larissa Martinez of McKinney and Meyte Larra Ibarra of San Antonio.

Both of these women rather arrogantly and flippantly announced their status as illegal aliens.  They both used the term "undocumented" to describe their status.

Larissa Martinez claims that the reason she is undocumented is that the immigration system is broken.  Wrong!  She is one of many people who would dearly love to get a green card.  She broke in line.  She disobeyed the rules.  She came here under a tourist visa, overstayed her welcome, and went into the shadows.  There was a limited number of permanent resident visas available.  It is not that the system is broken. There isn't enough room for everyone who wants a green card.  She broke in line and pushed her way to the front.

Larissa Martinez doesn't understand how lucky she is.  There was a time when the people of Texas didn't want to be slapped with the cost of educating people like her.  However, her allies filed a law suit in which our Supreme Court declared that even though she was not a legal resident, she still had a right under the 14th amendment to an equal education.  With that decision, border states were forced to start financing their ultimate destruction.

We can feel empathy for Larissa, if we assume she came from a home with domestic violence.  However, there is not room for everyone in the world who suffers domestic violence to come to the United States under a tourist visa and overstay that visa.

What are we telling our young people by praising these women?  We are telling them to break the rules, don't wait in line, and push their way to the front of the line in their quest for a goal shared by others.  We are telling them the ends justify the means.  We are telling them to ignore the rule of law.  We are not making good citizens of them.  We are paving the way for a lawless society.

A More Correct Understanding of Homosexual Marriage

We are not getting the whole truth on the homosexual marriage issue.



First of all, it is wrongly reported that the United States Supreme Court Case, Lawrence v. Texas, affirmed a fundamental right to commit sodomy. That is not correct. Instead, what it says is that there is no rational basis for a law that prohibits homosexuals from committing sodomy while it permits heterosexuals to engage in the same act.



The United States Supreme Court, only 15 years earlier, in Bowers v. Hardwick, had decllined to overrule a Georgia Statute that prohibited sodomy between consenting homosexuals. In Lawrence v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court simply overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, which is rather odd, since the court will not touch other cases such as Roe v. Wade and McCulloch v. Maryand. Yet, in the case of Bowers v. Hardwick, the court simply declared it no longer binding precedent. This tends to make Lawrence v. Texas look like a political decision instead of a legal one.



An excellent Texas Supreme Court Justice, Priscilla Owen, had written the opinion that was attacked in Lawrence v. Texas. The 5th Circuit had upheld Justice Owen. Only at the Supreme Court level was the Texas statute finally struck down. It took Sandra Day O'Conner's vote to turn down the Texas Statute. The dissent was soundly argued. Still, Lawrence v. Texas does not declare a fundamental right to commit sodomy.



Had Texas not amended its sodomy statute to permit heterosexuals to commit sodomy, there would have been no victory in Lawrence v. Texas. Texas still has every right to declare sodomy an illegal act. In order to do so, however, it must make findings that apply across the board to all relationships.



There are two types of sodomy. One is oral-genital. The other is anal-genital. Texas has ample reason to declare both types of sodomy illegal. Texas could say that they are illegal because only the male and female genitals are designed to work together. Texas could find that when the anus is used as the tube that gives pleasure during intercourse, it is damaged. Because the membrane surrounding the colon is so thin, it is easily ruptured or torn. Fecal materials are highly toxic. Because the membrane is surrounded by blood vessels, mild tears provide a quick route for infection by toxic elements in the fecal materials.



Oral, genital contact is similarly hazardous, regardless of the gender of the giver or the receiver of the pleasure. The behavior might be prevalent, but if the legislature finds it is associated with genital infections, the legislature could outlaw it. The legislature won't because the legislature will take the position that oral sex does not cause a major problem in society. As long as it keeps people quiet and content, society can go on to solve the bigger problems of how to pay for the roads and education and how to deal with illegal aliens, and the cost of college tuition.

I'm pulled in that direction. I'm inclined to let people want to do with their lives. Let them engage in destructive behavior. What concerns me though, is if they've been warned about the consequences and they do it anyway, is that other taxpayers have to shoulder the consequences of dangerous sexual behavior.

I hear people clamoring for more freedom to express themselves by engaging in what used to be considered immoral activity. Yet, those same people, if they have no insurance, will be clamoring for help from our hospitals. They go out, act without control, and say "damn the consequences,' then proceed to catch a social disease. Then we all pay for it.

I know this about human nature. Until people are transformed in their thinking from the inside, they are going to live for themselves. If they truly loved God, they would want to present their bodies to God. They would not act contrary to nature. They wouldn't misuse their bodies. They would see their bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. Their entire life would be a presentation of their bodies as an offering to God.

By no means do I wish to suggest that human sexuality, as between a married man and woman, is not an offering to God. No, when a man and woman yield themselves to each other, and completely empty themselves of selfish desire, they are most fulfilled. That is when the peak experiences happen. Each of them is focused on pleasing the other. It is then when the spontaneous, uncontrollable spasms take place. That is beautiful, because that creates a deeper, more exclusive bond.

I do not say that human sexuality is a worship experience. It is an act of obedience. But neither is it a time of oppression. No, when a man or a woman oppresses the other and uses the time of sexual intercourse as an opportunity to ridicule, condemn, or to force the other to do something he or she consideres immoral or wrong, that's ugly. It becomes ugly when one of the parties coerces the other.

I think the natural response to a time of pleasure between a man and woman should be deep gratitude toward a merciful God. It is a great and rare privilege to enjoy our bodies as they were designed to be enjoyed. Life has enough trouble. God gives us the grace to enjoy ourselves in spite of the trouble.

The Ideal Fellowship

The Christian parachurch group, The Navigators, use a hand illustration to reinforce the idea of a balanced Christian Life. Those five components are Bible Study, Prayer, Fellowship, Witnessing, and Scripture Memory. A Christian, who neglects any one of these is not living a balanced Christian life. I admit, I fall down in every area. However, I do engage in Fellowship and Bible Study on a regular basis. I just do it intentionally in a one to one relationship. I do it corporately.

I do think our pursuit of God should be individual, but I think it should also be a corporate quest. We need each other. We need each other's insights. We need to hear each other's exhortations. We can't do it alone. I want to describe my ideal fellowship. Perhaps others will join.

The ideal fellowship must have a strong doctrinal statement. It must be so solid it rarely changes. It must be rooted in history and deep in theological understanding. It shouldn't be trendy or adapted to modern customs and values. The fellowship needs to know who they are and what they believe. It shouldn't be changing to fit the whims and desires of modern people.

The ideal fellowship should exist to carry out the Great Commission. It should be a place to gather for the worship of God and the sharing of the Sacraments. It should be a place to receive instruction. It must not neglect Witnessing.

Numbers don't matter. It could be big or small. What matters is the doctrinal statement, the closeness of the fellowship, and its commitment to witnessing.

The fellowship would honor great music. Contemporary Music is not Great Music. It is too subjective. It is based on personal experience. We need rich, doctrinal truth, because truth transforms. Others' experiences do not transform. We seek to be transformed in our own thinking. The scriptures should transform us.

The ideal fellowship should be Coventant and Reformed. I didn't use to think that way. I was more open to the freedom to experiment I found in Bible Churches. Some had elders. Some had deacons. Some had believer's baptism by immersion. Some just dedicated babies at birth. They all seemed to intend to follow the scriptures. It is just that they didn't have a connection with the past. The connections they had seem to be disconnections more than anything. People had come out of mainline churches. They were all escaping the mainline churches to something more authentic and real without the denomination labels. They didn't recite creeds and confessions because they tended to stress hard doctrines that were exclusive, devisive and uncertain.

The Bible Churches tended to say that all they needed was the scriptures. That sounded good on its face, but it ignored Church History. The Great Creeds and confessions settled questions that people are still asking today. We don't have to keep asking questions about the nature of God and Christ for example. The doctrine of God and Chirst was settled by the Council of Nicaea. We don't need to ask that question anymore.

We don't really need to answer the question of faith versus works. We know salvation is by faith alone.

We don't need a step by step how to manual. We simply need a fellowship, heavily rooted in scripture, with a heavy emphasis on worship, confession, and verse by verse exposition.

We could all benefit from a closer community. We really need to care about each other.

Finally, we need to be diverse, in terms of age, sex, marital staus, and socioeconomic level. Our diversity, though, must not divide us. It will not divide us as long as the study of the Scriptures remains our primary focus. We need to do more than just study the Scriptures. The Scriptures should challenge us and change us.

The Loss of Appreciation for the Lord's Day

My wife and I went to a mall yesterday, which was a Sunday. I preferred to stay home, but she wanted to go out and do some shopping that she didn't have time to do during the week.

I am growing less comfortable with shopping on Sunday. We can't even take one day to reflect upon the fact that we were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

I looked around at all the other people crowding the mall. It was a nice to be outside. I don't think all those people would be there in blustery weather, but there they were. They were consuming. That is our pasttime.

I reflected upon our Sunday School lesson in Revelation. I recalled the message, "come out of Babylon," and I recalled how the merchants of the earth marveled as Babylon fell in one hour.

It could happen here. The United States is deeply mired in debt. We are so far in debt that even if we quit spending, we'd still be obligated to pay for Medicare, Social Security, and the military, far beyond our ability to do so.

We can spend more than we tax ourselves only because other countries are willing to buy our debt from us. We are enslaving the next generation.

The next generation is living off of our spending spree. They are staffing the stores. They are the entry level clerks, making pocket money while they pursue an education. The young people are spending their money as fast as they make it. They aren't saving. They would be fools to save, because inflation is going to rob them of savings. Yet, failing to save is going to make them even more dependent in the future.

I think our Creator had a better idea. There comes a time when our endless quest to consume must stop. There must be a time to rest and worship our Creator. We are His. We belong to Him. The created world is not the most important.

We must make much of Christ. We must glorify Him and we must enjoy Him.

Dispensationalism versus Covenant Theology

I was a dispensationalist once. It started back in the 1970s. I was looking for meaning. The U.S. was mired in the Vietnam War. I wasn't a hippie and I didn't burn my draft card. My hair only reached my collar once, and I always brushed and combed it. I could never understand why anyone would want to wear unkempt hair. I only had a beard one time, in my thirties, when I played the role of Jesus in a church drama. I was even willing to volunteer for the Navy, but my patriotic parents and grandparents dissuaded me from volunteering for what they saw as a very poorly managed political war, whose objective was not to win. I wanted to be patriotic and loyal to America, but the hippies and the war protesters had a point. What was this empty materialism all about? I wanted to find meaning.

Well, the Dispensationalists had an answer. Israel had miraculously revived after almost 2000 years. It happened in 1948, and now the dispersed Jews were all returning home. Hal Lindsey, in the Late Great Planet Earth, pointed out that Biblical Prophecy was being fulfilled. Then we listened to Larry Norman's song "I wish we'd all been ready." We were convinced the end was near. The world was screwed up and there were wars everywhere. The answer was Jesus. I bought the whole package. What I didn't consider was the tremendous financial support of the United States and the European countries. Israel couldn't survive today without it. Quite frankly, I think some of the European countries were glad to get rid of their Jews after World War II.

There ensued almost thirty years of almost completely devotion to the Dispensationalist cause. Ultra patriotism came with it. I began to envision the takeover by Conservative Christians and the restoration of a truly righteous and just society.

What I've observed is completely opposite of what I envisioned. I see the forces of evil becoming even more bold and aggressive. I see family breakdown. One out of every three children is born out of wedlock, and people are trying to create non traditional families. Whole new sections of attorney generals' offices have been created to force primarily fathers to pay for the children they caused while "making love" to the mothers. We are now beginning to think in terms not of traditional families, but in terms of villages, so that even those who created traditional families out of moral conviction must now be forced to share in the cost of raising children who were created by those who deliberately rejected traditional morality. Bitterness and hatred between biological fathers and mothers has replaced a loving model. Now, some children are having to become accustomed to the fact that, though they are genetically created by the combination of an egg (provided by a woman) and a sperm (provided by a man), they will never know the true identity of both of their true parents. They are going to see themselves as machines created by technology. We are continuing to be depersonalized. We are even on the verge of being custom designed genetically. Children are being led to believe that same sex parentage is perfectly natural, when the very means by which they were created is termed "artificial insemination."

Amidst this societal breakdown, I also saw the breakdown of Christian worship. The choruses became emptier and less creative. Boring and monotonous is the word for it. Screaming guitars and raucous drums took the place of beauty and order. It was supposed to be "relevant to the culture." It was noisy and chaotic. God wasn't the center. The musicians were the center. Instead of singing congregationally, people swayed in the audience as if they were at a rock concert. If it was worship, it was unintelligent worship. I left.

The preaching declined. Expository preaching became psychobabble and pop psychology. More boredom, less intelligent content.

I escaped and found the world of Reformed Theology. I discovered its connections with history. Most importantly, I discovered what Jesus was really saying when he said, "the kingdom of heaven is here in your midst." I discovered why he was unimpressed with the huge stones that the disciples saw when they passed the Temple in the state of being rebuilt.

I now see the Jews in the Old Testament as a type of all of humanity. The lesson we get from them is that even though they were given numerous opportunities to repent and turn, they returned to sin. Paul was right when he said that all have sinned and fallen short. Jerry Vines was right when he said "God does not hear the prayer of the Jews." Because God doesn't hear the prayer of anyone who doesn't approach him through the advocate, our high priest, God's son Jesus Christ. God only hears one prayer of the unbeliever, and that is the prayer of repentance and faith. Neither Jews who claim to know God nor atheists have access to God, because they have no high priest to intercede for them and no atoning sacrifice for their sin. It is only the grace of God and his elective purpose that brings us to repentance and faith. We have no ability to believe without God's elective purpose and power. The true Israel is Christ. Christ is the Kingdom, and only those who are called, who truly repent, and truly believe are part of the Kingdom. The law now dwells in the hearts of those who believe. Jesus is our high priest and our atoning sacrifice. There no longer is a purpose for a temple built with human hands. As Jesus said on the Cross, "It is finished."

I now see the folly of propping up Israel as a Nation State. The message to those who call themselves Jews and to those who do not call themselves Jews is the same. "You are a sinner and you are headed for eternal Hell. Consider the destination of your soul in the face of a perfect and holy God. Consider Christ's atonement and his offer of grace. Repent and flee to Christ." If the Holy Spirit acts upon your heart and draws you to himself, then you will be saved eternally and you will enjoy the worship of God eternally. If you find this message repulsive and reject it entirely, I have nothing more to say. I cannot expect a person who refuses a relationship with God to act according to God's commandments. I will not seek to force you to conform to God's commands by passing laws to make you look externally like a follower of Christ. No, just as Paul said in Romans, God gave them up to their own degrading passions. The results of sin are obvious.